Arkansas gets a head coach who isn’t shy about talking big—and who has some serious accomplishments to back it up.

Bret Bielema is 68-24 (37-19 in the Big Ten) in seven seasons as a head coach, all at Wisconsin. The Badgers are bound for their third consecutive Rose Bowl. Even with the asterisk, that’s a pretty big deal.

How Bielema has done it—and the clues that gives about how he’ll go about his new job in Fayetteville—is what’s most interesting today.

Part by necessity and part by design, the foundation of Bielema’s program in Madison was always “unsexy” players.

“We’re not going to appeal to the sexy,” he told Sporting News in 2011. “If a kid’s looking for bells and whistles, wants a weight room that looks like a club, we’re not the place. … We work, we grind, and we take pride in doing that. The kids who want that have gravitated to us.”

Razorbacks fans may read that and say: That’s not going to be good enough here.

Undoubtedly, the 42-year-old Bielema will aim for higher-ranked recruits than he typically went after at Wisconsin. But he is who he is. Bielema is, if you’ll pardon the term, unsexy.

A former University of Iowa defensive lineman from a tiny town in Illinois near the Iowa border, Bielema is a grinder and looks the part.

He loves players who remind him of himself. At Iowa, he worked his way up from little-known recruit to team captain as a senior. He gave the Arena League a shot after college.

He played for Hayden Fry and worked for Fry, Bill Snyder and Barry Alvarez. That should give Hogs fans an idea of what they’re getting.

This is no charmer like Houston Nutt or mad scientist like Bobby Petrino.

This is Joe Sixpack, with a booming baritone and a cocky edge.

He’ll go right at Nick Saban and Les Miles, not to mention Kevin Sumlin. He may lack polish in certain areas as a head coach—late-game clock management has been an issue—but he won’t be intimidated. Bielema is confident to the core.

“I get mad when I’m sitting there in an airport and I see what’s new in college football and there’s 10 teams listed and we’re not one of them—and I know we can beat them, or a lot of them,” Bielema told SN last year in reference to the superpower programs.

It’s fair—and, frankly, foolish not to—speculate about whether or not his recruiting at Arkansas will be good enough to compete with the monsters of the SEC.

But Bielema definitely will restore an identity to the Razorbacks. Lots of power runs. Lots of weight-room warriors. Lots of toughness.